Sunday, October 31, 2004

I'm now posting from my new 700m, and I must say this laptop is a beauty. The immediate thing that I noticed about the laptop was the very mirror-like finish on the screen. Seriously, when the laptop screen is off, you could probably see a pretty good reflection of yourself on it. But once I turned on the laptop, I immediately noticed now clear and sharp this laptop displays everything. The Pentium M processor on this laptop is no slouch either. I ran the Matlab benchmark right after I installed Matlab, and this laptop only loses to the Pentium 4 3 GHz system when comparing this laptop to the various systems on the Matlab benchmark. Heck, it even managed to surpass a Dual G5 Powermac :P One thing that was kind of annoying is the smaller keyboard. The period key is even smaller than the regular letter keys, so I found myself hitting the foward-slash key many times while trying to hit the period. Also, the wireless networking in Windows was a bit of a pain in the butt to set up as well compared to the wireless setup on my old iBook, but I managed eventually to get it working. Also, although the 700m is probably the best looking laptop in the Dell laptop line at the moment (in my opinion), the construction of it isn't as clean or simple as my iBook. But overall, I am very satisfied with my purchase and hope to use this laptop for many good years to come. Also, feel free to send me a comment anyone is interested in purchasing my old iBook :P

Friday, October 29, 2004

Being the tech geek that I am, I always love to have new gadgets and gizmos to play with, but being the poor college student that I am, I don't have that luxury >.< However, there always comes that unexpected time where that once in a blue moon sale comes around and attempts to take your credit card hostage to encourange you to buy something. Last week on Monday, one of my friends sent me an email about a $750 Dell coupon on new Dell laptops. At first I was like o_O but after signing into Dell's website and plugging in the coupon code, it was indeed that blue moon sale as I saw that $1500 laptop I configured drop to $750! I passed the word along to Kabitzin since his companion Bunky needed a new laptop, and he ended up saving a good bit on moola. I was looking at the Dell 700m since it looked like the perfect replacement for my aging iBook: small, light, and powerful. Unfortunately, as word got out about the Dell coupon, the 700m's seemed to be flying off Dell's web shelves, and later on that day on Monday, the 700m became ineligible for the coupon >.<

I thought I missed out on a good opportunity, but a quick look to eBay quickly showed me where all those 700m's went, as there were literally hundreds of listings for 700m's coming up daily! So this past Sunday evening, I entered the eBay world and snooped around at all the lowest priced 700m hoping no one would notice :P Unfortunately at first, all those low priced ones quickly rose to the 1k level, leaving me a bit distraught. But I keep looking, and lo and behold, there was one sitting at $840 just waiting for the taking! I waited till about 2 minutes till the end of the auction, and jumped in at $850. Curses, someone beat me to it! But unwilling to be denied, I tagged on $10 more dollars to $860, and I was in the drivers seat of the auction. 1 min passes....30 seconds....15....5...3..2..1...DING DING DING! Kungfucius is now the proud owner of a new 700m!

Thursday, October 14, 2004

Here's an interesting concept for a webpage. It all started when someone took a picture of his cat with a flower, and it escalated into the Infinite Cat website where a cat looks at a picture of a cat which looks at a picture of a cat and so on. Pretty nifty and cute, so check it out! ^_^

Monday, October 11, 2004

This weekend proved to be pretty fun ^_^ Addie came over to visit over the weekend since she had Monday off because of Columbus day. This past Saturday was another home game for the OSU football team as we took on the Wisconsin Badgers, and armed with my football season tickets for home games, Addie and I and a couple of my other friends who ordered tickets together enjoyed an afternoon football game. Back at Cornell, I rarely attended any of the sporting events at Cornell even though the football gamd basketball games were free to students since Cornell really isn't up there in terms of athletics (although the Cornell hockey team is pretty decent), so I really didn't know what to expect. When Addie and I got to the stadium, we were greeted with a sea of people wearing red, grey, and white, and I was truely amazed by the amount of spirit that people had for the OSU football team. Now, this isn't just the students that were wearing the colors, but other families, kids, and even babies got into the spirit of the game. I was told that the seats my friends and I got were in the nosebleed section, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. We had a good view of the entire field and the giant screen that flashed stats, graphics, and other motivational tools used to rev the crowd up in cheering for the team. One of the biggest treats was watching the OSU marching band do their preshow before the players came out. They would start off in a square, but then proceed to spell out a script "Ohio" on the field, with a dotted 'i' to boot! It's hard to describe how intricately they spelled it out and how the band members weaved through each other to keep the cursive form, but it was truely sight to see! Unfortunately, the game didn't go OSU's way too much as the Buckeyes lost 24-13 :( Even worse, there was an obnoxious and VERY annoying Wisconsin fan yelling and screaming right behind me and Addie the entire game -.- Despite that, it was a great experience to sit and watch an actual college football contender ^_^

On Sunday, while Addie and I were out shopping at the Polaris mall, I finally got around to using this $20 gift certificate from Best Buy to get the first season of Knight Rider on DVD ^_^ Knight Rider was THE show to watch back during my younger days, and although it seems aged a bit, I still feel the same excitement watching it over again as David Hasselhoff drives the world's most famous Trans Am, the Knight Industries Two Thousand, through seemingly impossible situations such as dodging artillary shells in a bombing field. I hope the release the other seasons too on DVD! ^_^

Thursday, October 7, 2004

To all my readers (all 3 of you :P), sorry for taking a while to update. I actually went back home this past weekend to spend some time with my girlfriend Addie. Since we're kind of far apart, it's hard to find time to spend together, but we're managing as best as we can. One semi-funny thing happened this past Saturday while Addie and I were out at a driving range out at Bumblebee Hollow. Addie was using her mom's clubs, and since I didn't have clubs of my own, her dad let me borrow his clubs. At first, I wasn't having too much success with my iron shots, so I decided to switch up to one of the 5-wood drivers. Now, on one of the shots with the driver, I made contact with the ball and began to watch the ball sail up in the air when I noticed there was something else travelling to the right of it. I looked down at the driver, and needless to say, the club head had decided to go travel with the ball >.< I felt really bad about damaging the club and began worring about what Addie's dad would say, but Addie assured that her dad would be fine with it. A quick cell phone call back to her house, and her dad didn't seem too worried about it, but he did say to try and retrieve the club head. So Addie and I went back to the pro shop and asked one of the guys there if they would retrieve the club head since no one is allowed out in the driving field. Thankfully, the guy said that they could retrieve the club head AND offer to send the club back to have it replaced (apparently, this isn't the first time a club head has flown into their fields :P). Although the shop charged a $25 fee for it, I felt a bit better knowing that the problem will be taken care of ^_^